i7 vs Dual Xeon!

[boxblue]

Hi everyone
Im looking at getting a new workstation and have several quotes for various set ups. The main issue I have is whether to go for a dual xeon or an i7.
Ive been reading through many posts on these forums trying to find a good answer to my question but nobody really seems to know which is the best bang for buck.

So I thought id put it out there once and for all, anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks

[Morbid Angel]

Well if you read this thread here:

http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...INTERIOR-SCENE

its pretty clear that i7 overclocked is better performance vs price ratio. Those highly overclocked cores inside one cpu can perform nearly as good as two xeons and cost 1/4. That said, its not a linear comparison imho. In some calculations xeon is faster, in others i7. For example in 3ds max/maya a lot of functions are still using one core. So simple rule would be one core at 4.5 ghz is going to perform faster then one core at 2.3 ghz

With that said, I still buy xeons simply because in this case if you can afford it, imho xeon is better. Why? because new xeons has a lot more cores, 2699 v3 - 18 cores (single cpu) so 36 threads where newest i7 is 12 cores I believe. And the more cores the better it is for rendering and you are also investing into the future. You want this system to perform well 5 years from now, if you get a mid range i7 with 8 cores, 5 years from now it might not cut it anymore you might have to upgrade more often...So for this reason I would get best of the best you can afford